Pride: Divine Exam

By VivettaVenray

 

(WARNING: Contains cruelty, vore, digestion, omni/power stuff and some gore among other things.)

 

(NOTE: This story is part of the "Seven Sinful Size Stories" loose anthology series. This story has a little to do with "Pride", and is the seventh and final entry in the series! For now, at least. Who knows what wacky new sins humanity will discover next?!

 

Anyways feel free to let me know your thoughts on this story and/or the whole series if you want!)

 

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Chapter 1: Omnimento

 

Omnimento University. Good old OU, or omni-versity as a few called it. However most students just called it Omnimento or even just “University” since there’d be no confusion. After all, it was the only place in the Infinity Nexus for divine beings to get a college education.

 

Divine beings came in all sorts of shapes and sizes: in fact, many could even alter their forms at will. They also came in all sorts of power levels. Some could embody or control stars, changing the skies for billions of lifeforms in a system. To others, stars were but snacks. Some even found entire universes trifles: the kind of thing that’d get caught in their skin or light-forms as they floated through astral ether.

 

Within Omnimento’s home dimension, all were treated equal as much as possible. Lesser beings were elevated to a state where they could manifest at an appropriate scale. The more higher beings restrained their near-infinite forms of flesh, energy, light or so forth to walk the halls. Thus, eldritch beings studied side by side with mere planet-personifications.

 

Needless to say, as a condition of accepting an invitation to study, students entered a binding contract of sorts: a code of conduct. They couldn’t harm or devour one another or staff, even outside the University’s Dimension, so long as they were enrolled. After graduating they’d also agree to not try and absorb the university or anything now that they were ‘done with it’. The faculty, too, were bound by the terms.

 

Though powers could be restrained at the institute, egos were another matter. Lots of divines bumped heads with one another. Cliques and gossip abounded. A few beings were above those squabbles. For some, it’s because there were enlightened in some sense: realizing the pointlessness of personal attachments to status. For others, their very presence at the university inspired awe and jealousy. Etris fell into the latter category.

 

Already the new freshman was making waves. Her academic record was flawless so far. Given the nature of the students here, there were many 4.0s of course. Still, she finished her work the fastest, the tidiest, and the most elegant among her peers. She won those meta-academic games not recognized officially but score kept nonetheless.

 

Her pace towards graduation was limited only by how booked she could make her schedule and still have time to travel to class. Sadly, Omnimento forbade instantaneous travel and multiple simultaneous bodies on school grounds as part of its code of conduct. Those rules--and prereqs of course--were the only thing keeping her from graduating in a single semester.

 

It also helped that she was one of the most powerful beings to ever attend Omnimento. Her true form, if permitted to be unleashed, could wrap around this dimension many times over with its luminous embrace. She mastered in seconds topics that took lesser divines their entire undergraduate careers to grasp even the surface of. She was presently the most capable student to be attending Omnimento: her powers even surpassed most of the professors here. As icing on the cake, the prodigy was only 20 divine eons in age. Divines millions of times her age went or worked here, and they’d never even approach her level.

 

She was sublime, and the look on her face show she knew it.

 

Her smile radiated conceit like her body radiated light from its golden surface. That was the form she condensed to here: a slender, womanly shape of yellow light, devoid of all non-facial features like nails, nipples and so forth. Humans and humanoids were, of course, the fashion of the time. If a being could shape-shift, that’s the figure they’d tend towards. Etris and her two friends were off towards their final at Godhood 101.

 

Galigiu spoke up from Etris’s right. Her long wispy hair shined with stars in violet and blue. Her form housed quadrillions of life forms. You normally couldn’t bring pets inside the academic buildings, but exceptions were made for embodying entities like her. Her hair’s hue was lighter than her skin, though the shades were the same. Unlike Etris she actually wore some clothes: a skirt and blouse to mimic human garbs as her form mimicked their flesh enough for coverings to be appropriate. The petite woman’s flats clacked against the impossibly sterile tiles at their feet.

 

“Are you ready for the test Etris? I heard it’s gonna be tough.” said Galigiu. Her tone was like the hum of stars.

 

“It’ll be just as easy as all the other exams I’m sure.” spoke Etris in a dainty gold timbre. Her own naked steps made no sound.

 

“You thought Professor V.V.’s psionics final wasn’t hard?”

 

Etris set her shining hand on Galigiu’s shoulder.

 

“Oh sweet simple Galigiu, it was easy! This whole semester’s been a breeze. It was definitely a long exam though, and I do wish she’d have proofread it more.”

 

“You shouldn’t say or think that, she could be listening... with her mind!” said Galigiu.

 

“You know ESP is forbidden at the university Galigiu. Else, everyone who could would just try and read my mind to ace the tests.” Etris laughed at her own joke. Those were the ones she found funniest.

 

“What about you Chushuab, did you find it hard?” continued Etris, turning towards the cephalopodic blob of green tentacled flesh slithering along at her left.

 

“Bluvxl Vlorgk La Flurg.”

 

Etris chuckled. “You always say that Chushuab!”

 

The trio turned the corner into the next hallway and the universe-embodiments in their way cleared a path and averted their gaze. None wanted to get on Etris’s bad side. Protections from students mattered only while enrolled. Omnimento had to have some kind of expiration date, else no being would ever attend. Instead, the administration relied on its mandatory ethics classes to persuade the more powerful students from resolving grudges post-graduation. And for sure, no one else at the University wanted to risk a grudge with that woman of light, nice as she was. In the vast infinities they knew they’d be to her as germs to a mortal’s toes.

 

The three gals made their way into the lecture hall and took their seats. Just five minutes before the exam was to start a thick, clear bubble of green mist hovered into the room. She was like a snow globe of fog, minus the base and floating at will. The minty smoke glowed as she spoke in a gentle, mature tone. “Sorry for the delay everyone. We’ll began soon, but I wanted to say a few words first.”

 

The floating globe hovered to the lectern. “I just wanted to reiterate how excited I am to teach this class every year. I know this class is popular with freshmen, and it’s exciting to see divines of all tiers come together here at Omnimento. I’m far from the most powerful divines in this room, for instance, so I hope I provide even a small measure of proof that any godly entity can accomplish their dreams.”

 

Etris rolled her eyes which, being pinpricks of light, thankfully didn’t show too well. Professor Utixx sure liked to ramble. She wasn’t too interested in godhood. To Etris, this “Godhood 101” class was gonna satisfy her “R” gen-ed credit. R for recreational, of course. Ruling lesser civilizations was a popular past-time for divines of course. Some divines, like Galigiu, naturally ruled in the sense that they were made of actual space stuff. Some powerful divines even made civilizations themselves rather than claim an organic world or universe.

 

The professor continued her speech.

 

“I know not everyone might be interested in pursuing study in deifics after this class, but know that theologies based on you can naturally sprout up while you go about your business outside this academic dimension. It’s important to know how to handle mortal civilizations properly. Many of my more cosmologically-gifted students might have sapient races looking up to them without their knowledge! I think all divines should know how to handle that responsibility.” She chuckled, her sphere alight with green mirth.

 

Etris chuckled to herself. Before enrolling, she was very aware of all the universes her light had absorbed in its near-infinite expanses. She couldn’t imagine actually wanting to play with such minuscule beings, let alone care for them. Still, she was confident this would be an easy A.

 

“Anyways, before I pass out the papers...” continued the professor. A green aura hovered around each stapled booklet she brought along, and they floated above every student’s desk.

 

“There will be a surprise practical portion of this test!”

 

All the students gasped in unison. Even Etris was surprised, though she had the sense not to show it. Whispers picked up before Utixx cut them off.

 

“Now now, don’t worry this part of the exam will be easy as long as you’ve been paying attention in class and built a good intuition of how to act as gods. Lastly, the test will be conducted on your very own Earth out in the wild!”

 

The divines looked happy at that. A few audibly cheered and some of the more amorphous beings glorped with joy.

 

“I know, it’s a popular planet. Anyways, we’ll do the practicals in order of who finishes the written portion first. Don’t rush though. Without further ado let’s start!”

 

Etris’s luminous mind fixated on one word in the professor’s instructions there: ‘first’. If any student would be first in something, it’d be her.

 

No sooner than the papers fell to the desks did Etris zip through the entire exam. As usual, she made a show of it. Her hands of golden light flipped the pages faster than some lesser divines could fathom. Soon as her shining gaze fell on a page she assimilated each and every question there. Her pen slashed to fill in all the right answers. With her eidetic memory and unfathomable intellect not a single prompt had her stumped. She finished, took up her paper and began to stand up to turn it into the professor.

 

“Oh, when finished please just raise your hand I can levitate the page over here without making a disturbance-” said Utixx, but Etris already moved the sheet over with her own golden aura surrounding it. It was one she knew the professor couldn’t have stopped.

 

“Ah, sorry!” she said quietly, as an exam was still going on.

 

Etris was definitely smart, but there still a few other exceptional students. They finished a few seconds later: still orders of magnitude slower. In general, the more powerful students finished faster. The universe-embodiments followed shortly after, than galactic ones like Galigiu. Finally the planet-embodiments, who’s meager powers were the baseline for even getting an invite to Omnimento.

 

Eldritch beings, however, were a toss-up. Chushuab flapped her tentacles to signal she was done, and Utixx hovered the final sheet her way.

 

“Alright, all the written portions are completed. We’ll do the practical exams now, so everyone line up.”

 

They did so, in order of completion. Etris smiled wide at the front. Professor Utixx called up her name and she approached the lectern. Her hands crossed at her front and she basked in the subtle expressions of jealousy painted on the faces of her peers.

 

“Everyone please remain in the lecture hall till the exam’s done. I will go with each of you in turn to a naturally formed universe near its Earth. I’ve gotten special permission from the dean herself for this trip off school grounds, and she even helped me find the universes in question. To make sure everyone finishes this part of the exam in time for their next final, time within the universes will be de-synched with this dimension. This way, everyone will only be waiting a second for their turn.”

 

“Alright.” continued the professor. “Let’s go!”

 

The two disappeared in a flash of light.

 

Chapter 2: Practical

 

The two zipped in right by the planetoid “Pluto” in the Solar System. The icy brown sphere was roughly the size of Etris’s pupil. Also, to her surprise, she noticed the Professor’s misty form and surrounding bubble had shrunk to be roughly fist-sized. The orb of a professor hovered by her shoulder.

 

“Why’d you warp us here Professor Utixx? Isn’t Earth billions of miles closer to the star?”

 

“Correct Etris, but remember your lessons.”

 

“I never forget.” said Etris.

 

“Err yes of course. Well, then you know the first thing a deity should do is introduce themselves.”

 

“So why aren’t we over there?” she crossed her arms, debating on just warping over herself now that she was off school grounds.

 

Utixx’s patience held strong.

 

“Knowing the theory is different than the practical. Think how to apply things. Remember humans and look at your current form. Is that something you think they could comprehend properly? Sure you are shaped as a human, but without features you might not be very relatable. You’d probably hurt their eyes with that light. Now, not every student can shape-shift of course, but you are one of them. A deity should use any appropriate tool at their disposable, after all.” said the orbed mist.

 

“Shape-shift? But I am already shape-shifting.” Etris pressed her hands to her arms, glided and glowing as pure light. “As part of the University rules I’ve had to compress myself to this little figurine.”

 

“Wait, you mean you never shape-shifted for fun before attending Omnimento?”

 

“Why would I Professor? My original form is perfect. Stretching through the ethers in a-”

 

“Well now is the perfect time to try!” said the Professor again. Etris seemed unpleased to be interrupted, but that green globe was grading her here.

 

“You see.” she continued. “Many gods appear to mortal civilizations all the time in shapes more recognizable to them. Local fauna and the like.”

 

“Local fauna? You want me to shrink down to the level of such insignificant creatures?” Etris’s tone was indignant at the thought, arms crossed.

 

“Now now, they may be insignificant to us, but remember the lesson I mentioned on the first-” said Utixx

 

“Yes yes, significance is a matter of perspective and context.”

 

“Exactly! But to answer your question, no. This is a more relaxed exam. There will be a grade, and some practices to get through, but you have a lot of liberties to do things as you please. I expect most students to want to be at least a bit bigger than the mortals.” said Utixx.

 

Etris huffed. “Fine, I suppose I can shrink a tad and adopt a more familiar form.”

 

The luminous-being closed her stark white lights of eyes and focused. In a near-infinitesimal amount of time, white garbs covered up her body, wrapping around her top with another piece about her waist to trail down to her knees. Beneath the robes were silk undergarments, also white. With clothing out of the way, the blinding surface of her body shifted to fair human flesh now only gently aglow in a very slight incandescence. Her hair of light tendrils turned to blonde strands, and when her eyes opened they were human in design: blue iris on white, vein-less sclera.

 

The woman set a hand to the flawless skin by her stomach. She shivered.

 

“Urgh, so this is what it feels like to be meat.” she said. Her face sneered at that last word.

 

“Now now Etris you shouldn’t judge like that. Mortals, and even many divines don’t get to pick and choose like you do. Why, I can’t even shape-shift myself. Without my globe, my own form is diffuse.”

 

It occurred to Etris she was doing something someone else couldn’t. She smiled again.

 

“You’re right, I suppose I could get a little used to this.”

 

Etris scrunched her fingers and toes and stretched her limbs.

 

“Alright.” she continued. “This should be acceptable. Time for my introduction!”

 

“Yes but just make sure to to-”

 

Before Utixx could finish the sentence, Etris had warped the two of them outside Earth’s orbit.

 

The citizens of Berlin, Germany went about their bustling business. They marched through the streets in their silver leotards, waiting for the hover-cars to finish zipping by before they crossed the LED-laden streets. It was a usual busy day in the city till a great big eye filled their sky. Unblinking, it focused its pupil right on them.

 

Hovering outside the planet was Etris, staring down at the basketball-scale world. Utixx was at her shoulder, scaled as she was to the student before. Etris opened her mouth to address the world before the shocked professor had a chance to interject.

 

“People of Earth!” she began, then stopped. The entire western hemisphere had been charred black.

 

When the divine spoke, she grossly underestimated the sheer power of the gesture to mortal forms. She was used to lowering her means of communication while enrolled at Omnimento, but even that level of converse was far too much. Her size had the volume of her voice near unintelligible, and she spoke with a radiant timbre that literally seared everything her words reached. Billions of lives were expunged in an instant: dissolved by her divine words or ripped apart by storms of syllables.

 

“Ah I think they heard me!” she said.

 

Etris turned her head towards Utixx, whose green mist lit up with mild fury.

 

“Etris! You said you would shrink.”

 

“I did professor!” she said. Those words obliterated a bit more of the world.

 

“Not nearly enough, and you also aren’t stymieing your voice enough either. You’ve just killed over half the world’s population! That’s hardly a good introduction at all.”

 

Etris grit her teeth. There was silence, but the professor’s sigh broke it. The green mist in that globe settled back to its minty, gently sparkling state.

 

“Forgive me, but I do get a bit passionate about these lifeforms. Thankfully we can fix things here, but first let’s warp a bit further away.”

 

Etris did so, still a bit in shock at the criticism. Once they were by Mars, the Professor glowed a bright green. She visibly strained, her mist pulsing and thrumming till the Earth was restored to the time before Etris broke it. The universe around them, too, was adjusted as such.

 

“Wew” gasped Utixx. “That takes a bit of energy on my end, so try not to break the planet too much. You must remember our definitions of small are very different from theirs. Try a more ‘down to Earth’ approach as the humans say.” she chuckled.

 

Etris raised these new eyebrows of hers. Sure, she destroyed half the planet, but the other half definitely knew she was there. In her mind, that was ok far as introductions. Sadly, the professor was the one grading her still.

 

Etris waved her hand dismissively. “Fine fine.” she said. “I think I get the idea. I’ll shrink real low and try talking more ‘to their level’.”

 

The two warped back to the planet. Citizens of Denver, the capital city of New Colorado, turned their heads to a sudden boom. Looming outside their city, miles tall, was a blonde woman staring down with a smile. That noise they heard was one of her building-dwarfing toes wiggling and stirring up a casual tremor. A transparent globe of green mist hovered by her head, flicking with little lights.

 

“Greetings humans of Earth. I am your god, Etris. Please tell everyone else on the planet this.” said the divine student. She set her hands to her hips and nodded, satisfied.

 

The city shifted to a bout of confusion. Silence and whispers filled the air. “What is this?” “Some new hologram display?” “It couldn’t be, I felt those quakes.”

 

Professor Utixx observed. This type of confusion was normal with a deific introduction. In time, their lesser minds would begin to relax and try to communicate with Etris. Surely then she’d realize how rewarding caring godho-

 

“Professor, when are they gonna do something?” said an impatient Etris. She had turned her head towards Utixx to speak, and her golden locks turned with her. Not used to having a more material hair-style, she didn’t think about the passenger jet caught in its way. Strands meters in width clipped clean through the chassis of the craft. Travelers burst apart on the impact which, less than a second later, exploded the entire jet by slamming through its fusion engine.

 

“Etris no!” cried out the orb.

 

Fiery chunks of metal rained down from above. Jagged shards of titanium sliced right through the chrome skyscrapers below. A chain reaction of building destruction ignited with how dense the structures were packed. By the time things fully settled, about a quarter of the city lied ruined.

 

Hover-cars stopped in their tracks, holding up traffic. The masses filtered from their office buildings and crowded the monorail stations to try and get back to their habitats before transit closed. Fights broke out everywhere.

 

The Professor talked a fluster.

 

“Etris! Mortals take time to process things. If you had just waited they would hav-”

 

“Also, those aren’t the humans I’ve been reading about. Where are their skirts and jeans?” said Etris, ignoring the professor’s words.

 

“This universe formed earlier than the average one, so humans here are farther along. That’s besides the point. Your introduction is ruined, now they fear you. We should rewind things again an-”

 

“Nonsense nonsense. I aced the written exam so I can ace this. I’ll just calm them down is all.” interrupted Etris once more.

 

The student thought long and hard about how humans calmed one another. In addition to being something of a pop culture phenomenon that many of her peers obsessed over, they were an occasional case study throughout the course.

 

‘Ah, humans typically hug one another in times of stress, or lay a hand on each other’s shoulder. They touch each other. Of course!’ thought Etris.

 

The godly woman’s clothes fluttered in the wind while she addressed the city. “Do not worry about that bit of destruction tiny humans. I, Etris, your infallible god, shall comfort you all.”

 

She raised her bare foot above the city and lowered it. Utixx was too confused to speak, and her silence let the rest happen.

 

The divine student thought herself a genius. She obviously wouldn’t shrink down to hug them all, and doing so at her current size would be impossible. So, what part of her body could they touch? Why, her foot of course! She was even bringing it to them so they didn’t have to move. ‘I’m so generous’, she thought.

 

She smiled wide as her foot came down. Etris’s wrinkled sole filled the sky of the city’s survivors, which still numbered near one hundred million. The gray patch got eclipsed by her foot, and soon after it grazed the tops of hundreds of skyscrapers.

 

“Don’t worry, I know you can’t reach that high.” she boomed.

 

Still smiling, she set her perfect ped down further. Shining silver structures broke against her sole. Rubble tried to slip into the wrinkles of her foot, but the dim glow permeating her skin expunged such intrusions, sending the metals and polymer-lattice chunks down to the streets as more destructive rain. Millions more died beneath the collapsing buildings which, despite her abilities, she didn’t even think to protect them from.

 

Her sole almost touched the ground, laying close enough that the extremely few survivors--a scant few million--got pinned with either their face or back to the city ground and the other faced right up against her sole. A few humans even popped, having been unlucky to fall on their sides and be unable to adjust positions while she stepped seemingly without mercy. There were no more screams to be had, as they were muffled and swallowed by the ground or foot-flesh. All the mortals wiggled and writhed, their primitive minds having them try and do anything to escape.

 

“Oh, do not worry little mortals. Even at my scale I can feel you touch me in return. It’s... admittedly quite nice.” said Etris. She closed her eyes and basked in their affection, not thinking to realize that those squirms she cooed about were death throes. Air was running out beneath her oppressive miles-long step. The squirms faded as they gasped for the last bits of breath hidden in the meters-deep wrinkles of her sole.

 

Etris opened her eyes when every last movement faded. She lifted her foot and set it to the side of the destroyed city. “How was that professor? I managed to calm down that entire sentiment with just my touch.”

 

Utixx shook from her stupor. “Etris, you’ve killed them all!”

 

The student tilted her head. “What do you mean? They’ve stopped fighting with one another. No punching, no yelling.”

 

The professor, bewildered, “Etris, humans need oxygen to breath. Also all those buildings you stepped out of the way had to go somewhere and that somewhere was atop-”

 

“Oh I get it!” said Etris. “They became so excited at my attention, that their hearts couldn’t bear it, and they died. I couldn’t think of a more peaceful way for the things to go out!”

 

Etris shined with self-assurance. The professor wasn’t sure how to reach her on this matter, so she moved on after making a mental note for the ‘performance’ on this part of the test.

 

“Let’s move on to the other parts of the practical.” said Utixx.

 

“You mean there’s more? Haven’t I shown enough?”

 

“No. Well, perhaps in a sense, yes.” Utixx sighed, then regained her professionalism and continued.

 

“A good deity does more than just proclaim their existence. Let’s see how you can directly help out the mortals of this planet with some divine interventions”

 

Chapter 3: Blessings

 

The pair warped a little ways to the North. Vast swaths of dull, brown and green fields lied before Etris’s naked toes. Scampering about the many miles of like-colored squares were tens of thousands of laborers who stopped to stare up at her slight and massive form in awe. Each such human was clad in full gray body-suits and wearing visor-helmets. Interspersed between them were gray and yellow machines on tank treads. Some sprayed salmon-shaded mist over the vegetation, while others reached out with scissor limbs and vacuum tubes to suck up the cut crops.

 

“What’s the importance of this spot, and what are they doing down there?” asked Etris.

 

Professor Utixx spoke, always excited to answer questions.

 

“Well, we are within this same nation as before and this is w-”

 

“Nation?” said Etris.

 

“Oh it’s a thing some mortals do. Think planet-wide team sports.” said Utixx.

 

“Ah.”

 

“Yes. Anyways, as I was saying, here they grow the nutrients they need to live. Now, most divines eat only for fun and to accumulate more power, but humans are one of the many sapient lifeforms that eat to live. Now, I brought you here to help them out. There’s been an awful drought of late. The plants they grow to eat require water, and so they’ve grown a tad dull without it.”

 

“Why don’t they just bring in water from elsewhere?” said Etris.

 

“Well they do, but it’s not enough and they’ve had to slow the harvest. For a variety of reasons this makes the civilization unhappy. Now you, as their god, could help them out somehow perhaps?...” The professor let her voice trail at the end there to leave space for an answer. She saw Etris’s eyes light up with realization, and felt a small measure of joy.

 

“I see! All they need is some water and their harvest will be better.”

 

The professor thrummed with excitement.

 

“I’ll just get them some water then. That’s easy enough.” continued Etris.

 

Etris cleared her throat. “Fear not my sweet, simple humans. I’ll give you all the water you need.”

 

She snapped her fingers and disappeared. A nanosecond later and she was back. Her bare feet rested over mountains far in the horizon. Her soles snuffed out dozens of settlements. She noticed, of course, but they weren’t part of this portion of the exam, and thus didn’t matter.

 

Storms rushed through the mid-western United States as her absolute leviathan of a form leaned down and displaced countless air currents. Her pink lips were visible through the clouds above. She spoke, thankfully having mastered the ability to not utterly destroy sapients with her voice at any height.

 

“There we go. Now, accept my blessing.”

 

Her lips pursed, and the sound of swishing fluid hung above much of the state. The orb of misty green didn’t except this, so she didn’t grow along. The professor, too, was right in the path of what was to come.

 

Spit.

 

“Pwah.” uttered Etris. She infused the noise with a heavenly ring as though it were the most splendid boon a mind could conceive.

 

A sea’s worth of fluid dripped down, hanging precariously from a thin band of itself trailing from the divine student’s lips. Though a solid glob in its descent at her scale, less vicious portions of the mass came down as cloying rain. Yet, even those ‘minute’ droplets were the size of swimming pools and destroyed entire acres at the time.

 

Then, the strand thinned to the point of snapping and the saliva fell at once.

 

It pooled over Professor Utixx, who hovered through the current with minimum effort. The humans beneath were not so gifted. Cloying currents washed over the entire super-farm, ripping the crops from the dirt and the dirt from the planet’s rocky crust. All the workers were crushed under the liquid’s weight, with their robot helpers along with them.

 

In an attempt to be ‘extra thorough’ Etris over grew herself for the task. So, once done ravaging the farm, the spittle fanned out to the surrounding super-burbian regions still within the farm-state. Waves as tall as skyscrapers engulfed settlements as the ‘blessing’ rushed into and over homes. The death toll reached the millions by the time the spit finally settled. Each poor soul was either drowned in the fluid’s bulk, crushed by its weight, or torn apart in its flowing currents.

 

Etris smiled down from above. A mere thought and her lips were clean again. She shrunk back down to her former height and noticed her drool blurring the surface of the Professor Utixx’s orb.

 

“Oh.” she giggled. “I got so caught up bestowing my blessing, that I neglected to bring you along with my growth there.”

 

Without asking, Etris lifted up her robe and rubbed the clear glob dry. Utixx was speechless throughout, still processing the disaster she just witnessed. A thought from Etris had her white garbs dry again.

 

“So did you like it? I figured what better water to give them, then one from my own body. Divine water! Pretty creative right?”

 

She smiled, expecting praise from the comparative plum of a professor. The globe hovered in silence for a moment. Once again, she decided it prudent not to press Etris on this.

 

“In the future, I feel a little bit of rain would have been far more appropriate. For now, let’s just move on to the next portion of the test. This one I have a feeling you might be good at: smiting. There’s a battlefield to the north, but let’s go there at a much smaller size if you don’t mind? I hate to give hints but, well, for the sake of the humans...”

 

“Alright Professor, I’ll go along with that I suppose.”

 

Utixx didn’t bring attention to the impudence, instead warping the two to the northern border of this nation.

Chapter 4: Smiting

 

Etris’s idea of shrinking down still had her at a few miles tall. Utixx sighed internally, though she didn’t bring it up. It was still a vast improvement. As before, the orb of green misty light hovered by her student’s shoulder.

 

The blonde divine loomed over a battlefield stretching tens of miles in width. Her sudden appearance cast a decent shadow on the two fighting forces concentrated to her front. The mortal combatants paused for just a moment before getting right back into their brawl with one another.

 

Soldiers clad in titanium power suits battled towering and bewitching women with hooves, horns and hardly, if any, clothes. Red, blue and white flags were painted on the side of clunky square war machines, treaded with spikes at their top to dissuade stomping. Not well enough it’d seem, as a toned 300ft tall woman with broad antlers stamped her hoof down on one of them. The monster-woman lifted up her furred leg and cackled at the mess left bellow. Soldiers nearby activated their jet-packs and flew at the towering she-beast, firing their rifles at thick skin. Around that titan, smaller though still giant monster-women of various sizes tussled with combatants of their own.

 

“What are those creatures?” asked Etris.

 

“The soldiers below call them demons--or Canadians. You see, the human nation you stand on is known as the United States of America, or ‘USA’. At this point in time, it’s made up of 37 ‘states’, each of which played a role in irradiating their neighbor nation to the North hundreds of years ago. This act transformed those people into part-beast. Since then, the two sides have been at constant war.”

 

That gigantic monster-woman from before yanked up one of the flying soldiers. Her fingers crunched up his power suit, rendering him immobile. The red war paint on her fair cheeks spread as she smiled. Her maw then opened wide and she swallowed the armored man whole. A horrid fate in her stomach awaited. The organ was rife with acids and smelling of the spruce and poplar trees which made up most of her diet.

 

Etris stroked her chin. “And why are all these Canadians women?”

 

“They aren’t. The males just stay north and lay the eggs. Anyways, this war has been going on long enough. That large demoness is Debra the Devourer. She’s the Warrior Queen of Canada, and personally fights in every battle.”

 

Professor Utixx hovered towards the south end of the war zone. “You see that golden armored man?”

 

Etris did. Several steps (from her height) to her left was an unhelmeted, grizzled speck of a human. He watched the battle from afar with some high-tech binoculars, surrounded by elite guards. Once in awhile he’d bark orders into his collar-mic.

 

“That’s General Shux, in charge of the entire USA military here. Those two are the leaders of each side.” Said Utixx.

 

The orb hovered back to Etris’s side, and the professor continued talking.

 

“Now, for this portion of the exam your goal is to get them to stop fighting. As deity to this planet’s people, be they fully human or part beast, you shouldn’t tolerate wars of this length. It’s a very solemn affair, but occasionally a deity must use some of their power to put some down some mortals to make a point. Even now they are more focused on their grudges with one another than on your deific presence. I think of all my students, if any know how to hold attention here, it’d be you Etris.” Utixx finished up with a small chuckle.

 

Etris smile, of course she’d be the best at this. In her mind, she’s been perfect at everything so far.

 

“I think I understand what needs to be done to bring this war to an end.”, she said.

 

When Etris next spoke, it was heard by the two sides below. Her voice thundered with authority.

 

“Mortal humans and beast-women. You may not have heard of me yet, but I am Etris and your planet’s new god. I’ve heard you have been fighting for far too long. This displeases me, and so I’ve come bring an end to this war once and for all.”

 

She raised foot up high and swayed it above the battlefield’s center. Toes wiggled up above as the forces shivered in awe. Even the Warrior Queen herself was but a bug to such a godly being.

 

“Demons win.”

 

Etris moved her foot over a swath of the human forces and stepped down. Rifts in the Earth cascaded from the step like cracks in a dropped plate. The fissures swallowed up more troops from each side. The student twisted her foot to and fro, humming happily to herself as the humans began to fall back. The Warrior Queen bent her knees and bowed to this great patron of theirs, and all her warriors followed suit. From afar, General Shux watched in horror and confusion.

 

Professor Utixx seethed in that globe of hers. Her misty form alighted in a roil. If she had eyes, they’d be twitching like mad. “What?!? No you aren’t supposed to pick sides here!”

 

“I don’t understand professor, I just ended the conflict. Well, I suppose there are still a few left.”

 

Etris lifted up her foot and set its big toe atop a few more hundred armored troops. The digit dragged along the battlefield, making the trench it formed their graves. Utixx yelled out again.

 

“Stop! Stop!”

 

Etris did so with a groan. “I don’t understand. I’m doing as this part of the exam requires.”

 

“No no, you were supposed to make a show of force then end the war peacefully! Both sides have some grievances with each other. As a god, you should see above the petty squabbling and move the people of this planet towards the most advantageous compromise. That way, no side is too unhappy.”

 

Etris looked at Utixx as though the professor’s words were the dumbest thing she ever heard.

 

“Work towards a compromise? But I like the demons better.”

 

Utixx saw the student wouldn’t get the point.

 

“Look, it’s part of the grading criteria.”

 

Etris frowned. “Fine fine.” She then addressed the mortals below. “Never mind, change of plans.”

 

She held out her right hand and thought a thought. The elite guards of General Shux frittered and fussed as their general disappeared from their careful watch. The soldier in Debra the Devourer’s hand breathed a sigh of relief as the Warrior Queen also vanished, though he now found himself falling a couple hundred feet to the ground once free from her clutch.

 

The two commanders appeared on the blonde deity’s landscape of a palm. Debra’s hooves stumbled for a moment on this unfamiliar, soft surface, and the much smaller General Shux certainly had a lot of adjusting to do. If not careful, he could easily get his feet caught in the deep wrinkles of the hand. Warmth emanated from the fair skin below, and both guests turned up towards that enormous, softly glowing face above.

 

“Greetings mortals. I, your god, have called you here to hash out your differences with one another to end the war. I’m sure you have a lot of discussing to do.”

 

From Etris’s perspective, both these creatures were positively puny. Shux stood at about a tenth of an inch to her immensity, with the 300ft tall Debra coming up only at half-an-inch in comparison. The size differential mattered little to her: both were trivial little creatures. Shux, however, looked up to the Warrior Queen licking her lips and shuddered. Fear notwithstanding, he did as the did as this self-proclaimed deity ordered.

 

He spoke. “Our Military won’t rest till the invasions stop. I know we haven’t been perfect these past centuries, but the current demands of the Canadian nation would ravage our econo-”

 

Debra the Devourer took a step toward the general, knocking him over with the force of her hoof hitting the divine’s perfect skin. Etris giggled at the ticklish sensation and, through her mirth, didn’t care to stop the Warrior Queen from devouring the General, as was the demon’s namesake. A small bulge disappeared down the female’s neck, and her rival commander now screamed and sizzled in her guts. A churn sent him under a bolus of mushy trees and the bones of some of his men. The antlered women pat her stomach and grinned, then walked to the edge of Etris’s hand to cheer down at her forces below.

 

Etris stopped laughing and processed the events. “Oh, you weren’t supposed to do that you know!” she said, chastising the Demon Queen. The hooved woman turned around and started bowing at once, lavishing the divine student in praise.

 

“Hmm, well that does make things a bit better.”

 

Utixx was incensed. “What are you doing Etris! You can’t just let her eat the rival commander like that. Your ruining the trust of the humans. This is a prime example of when a mortal must be dealt with. As it stands, that action of Debra’s will only further exacerbate the grudges and war.”

 

Etris rolled her eyes: very visible now that they weren’t just orbs of pure light. She was getting sick of the professor’s ‘hints’ which felt more and more like dumb nitpicks.

 

“If you say so.” she cleared her throat and let her voice wash over the mortals on the battlefield.

 

“This war must end. The Warrior Queen has acted in haste devouring the general, and must be punished!”

Etris had to think fast. How to punish such a transgression? Many ideas floated through her mind until...

 

‘Ah ha, how poetic. If someone pokes out an eye, they should lose an eye in turn. If a someone eats another then...’

 

Etris opened her mouth wide, and the supplicating monster-woman trembled at the sight. The divine was fairly authentic with this body’s design, and it featured all the teeth and saliva-strands of a human maw. The student chucked Debra inside with a flick of her hand.

 

Utixx watched on in, as usual, horror. Etris swished the demon leader around, making some unabashed slurping noises all the while. Soon the deity swallowed and Debra, leg-fur matted with saliva, slid right down her throat. The demoness didn’t last long in the deity’s gut. The fleshy walls and floor churned incessantly, and the student definitely overshot potency of her digestive fluids.

 

“Oh wow, you all don’t taste half-bad.” she quietly mused. Her hand tapped at her cute little belly, within digested the leader of an entire nation.

 

Back to addressing the two sides.

 

“Ok, both your leaders are dead so, let’s stop the war now please. Divine orders and all that.”

 

The sides looked to each other for but a moment, then took up fighting again. Etris’s impatience flared up, and her eyes with it. She stomped her foot on a cluster of the forces, then bellowed in a radiant thoom.

 

“Now!”

 

Terrified and wounded, both sides retreated. Etris crossed her arms and smiled smug and self-satisfied.

 

“That’s better.”

 

Professor Utixx sighed.

 

“Well, you ended the war but with far more causalities than I expected. Killing the two leaders also has far reaching consequences for the mortal nations. I can’t believe I’m saying this to you of all people, but this practical exam is going so poorly I think we should just skip the final portion o-”

 

“What?!? Poorly?”

 

Etris turned her whole body towards the globe of mist. Her titanic foot carelessly thudded down atop some retreating soldiers in the process.

 

The student continued.

 

“I’ve done all the tasks asked. Not only have I never failed an exam in my life, but I’ve always finished first and flawless. Nothing was wrong with my performance, just your evaluation!”

 

There was a furor in her voice, but that sort of righteous indignation wasn’t something Utixx hadn’t seen before. The professor responded with patience.

 

“Etris your written exam was flawless, true, and no one is denying your intelligence or innate powers. Still, in my trillions of years teaching this course at Omnimento University I’ve never once had a student cause this much trouble for the sapients on the practical test. Don’t worry, even with the messes you’ve made, with my generous grading you’ll still finish with a B+ in th-”

 

“B+?!?” Etris’s hair and eyes began to glow gold, leaking her true radiance out a bit. “That’s not fair!” her voice crackled with a piercing hum. The dim light on her skin flared up and engulfed the grass by her feet, leaving behind dirt toasted to glass. A few more humans seared away too.

 

“Etris please!” said Utixx. “I just don’t want you hurting the people of this planet anymore. I can reset the damage but I see no need for more suffering when I can’t see ho-”

 

“What’s the last portion of the practical? Am I not entitled to take it?”

 

Professor Utixx sighed. “It’s examining the final devotion of the mortals, but based on what you’ve done so far I’m not sure how much praise you can reliably collect. The humans are surely terrified of you; even the fierce savage demons of Canada fear you. I’m not sure you’ll do well enough to increase your grade.”

 

“Just you wait!” she replied. “I’ll show you, I’ll make them all bow to my undeniable greatness.”

 

“That’s not w-” The professor cut off herself this time with another exasperated sigh.

 

She could always just rewind the universe after.

 

“Ok ok, we’ll do the final part of the exam but even if it doesn’t go too well you have to be unders-”

 

“Wonderful!” interrupted Etris. her eyes and hair calmed back down.

 

“Let’s get started then!”, said the student.

 

The two of them teleported to another city.

Chapter 5: Devotion

 

The pair teleported outside a coastal city, with Etris still at her 5 mile height and Utixx still roughly plum-size and floating by her shoulder.

 

“Alright the goal of this part of the exam is to just go around the world and get as many people praying to you as possible. It’s a test of how much your mortals, the sapients of Earth, respect and worship you. Now we haven’t visited this city before, but all the ones we have you destroyed so it’ll have to do. In any case, everyone in the world's heard of you by now.”

 

The professor continued.

 

“This human settlement known as Los Angeles, and it’s an independent city state known as the techno-pirate capital of the world and-”

 

“Yeah yeah I got this.” Etris said. She walked right up to the city and her careless steps flattened the dune buggy brigade that guarded the settlement’s spike-barricaded border. Her movements were a bit less graceful, her face a bit tense. The prospect of receiving an imperfect grade hung over her like a shroud, but no shadow could ever last long in her luminous presence. She was flawless, radiant, and she shined brighter than anyone else.

 

She’d ace this test in flying colors.

 

“People of Los Angeles, it is I, your most radiant and just goddess. I beseech you all to clasp your hands and bow your head in praise of my name.”

 

She smiled wide, sure she’d succeed. She had to! She was Etris, after all. A few seconds passed and she crossed her arms and tapped with her bare foot. Mild tremors wracked the city.

 

‘Come on’ she thought. ‘What’s the hold up.’

 

She reached out with her mind to detect any sort of prayers and found a few, but for the most part the city’s people were in a panic. They scrambled to their sea vessels or hid in their shanty-towers. Other men and women ran to towering rusted turrets and fired volleys of dynamite laden spears at her titanic form. They burst harmlessly against her shins and knees and her eyes twitched.

 

“I don’t have time for this! You’ve heard of my power, now bow!”

 

Her foot stamped down. An earthquake wracked the city and sink holes swallowed up entire blocks.

 

“I can destroy you, so bow!”

 

The citizens stopped fighting her to flee. The number of ‘devotees’ increased, but the entire rickety city started to collapse from the cascading quakes of her steps.

 

Professor Utixx sensed Etris’s growing anger and had to get her out of here.

“Perhaps this city wasn’t the best choice. Let’s go to another one shall we.”

 

Etris glowered down at the city, watching them literally crumble from a single step.

 

“Sure.” she said, and the two teleported to an island nation.

 

“Ok this city is known as London. They went the route of steam over silicon and built their city of brass and gears and-”

 

“They will bow.” Etris said confidently. She projected her image to every screen in the world, and her voice to every radio.

 

“Did you hear that? You stubborn mortal filth. Bow to me, praise my name! You are in the presence of a being better than you infinitely-fold.” her voice rang louder than the bells and clock-towers dotting the metropolis. The blue of her eyes glimmered gold and she raised a finger. An orb of light formed at the tip. “I’ll give you one minute before I sear you down to hot air.”

 

Professor Utixx tried to intervene.

 

“Etris this isn’t how yo-”

 

“Shut up!”

 

Copper-clad zeppelin soared up to intercept her. They over-loaded their steam engines, making clouds of warm fog along the way. She saw through it with her burning gaze, and from that same gaze fired beams of blinding light which fried the air vessels so hot they didn’t even smoke.

 

She dug her toes into the rock of the Earth, clenching in anticipation. She expanded her senses to the humans of London to see if they yielded to her satisfaction. About 30% were bowing or praying for salvation.

 

She wanted at least 60%.

 

“Fine. I see how it is! Well, you can serve as an example for the rest!”

 

Etris waggled her finger forward and the golden orb moved towards the center of the city.

 

“Etris stop!” The Professor moved her body in the pat of the light-sphere

 

The divine student batted her globe of a professor aside with a smack of her hand.

 

“Stay out of my way. You’ve been holding me back this whole exam!” she bellowed, gritting her teeth.

 

As it traveled, the sphere grew from its boulder thickness to the size of a great meteor, then bigger still. By the time it reached the city, its radius occluded the entire settlement and engulfed it in its luminous embrace. When the burning flash cleared, the city was gone. The student stopped sharing her image and voice with all the displays and speakers on Earth.

 

Etris took a few quaking steps closer, callously snuffing out thousands more lives beneath her soles. She looked down at the smooth glass coating the area where the city once stood. She saw herself in the reflective surface. Her hair was shining gold, her eyes bright with light. She smiled at the sight. She admired the perfect whites of her teeth and the perfect skin of her face. She radiated beauty and power.

 

She really was incredible.

 

The voice of that annoying professor took her from her righteous self-admiration and had her turn from her reflection to the noisy orb whose green mist sparkly mist shimmered with every grating word.

 

“Ok that’s enough. Not only have you disrespected me, but you’re outright slaughtering the mortals!”

 

“Wait! Listen to them, across the globe they are praying to me.”

 

She spoke true, since her show of force, about 70% of the Earth got on their knees and prayed. The number steadily rose.

 

“You’re doing it wrong!” began Utixx.

 

“Fear and destruction should be used sparingly and selectively. You haven’t made people respect you, you’ve made them cower, and worship not of admiration but only to spare their lives.”

 

“I got the result you wanted.”

 

“You did not!”

 

“They bow to me!”

 

“Not out of adoration! I’m rolling back this universe’s time-state till before you touched it, this exam is over.”

 

The professor focused, her green mist glowing but, try as she might, she couldn’t move time back a single second. She gasped.

 

“Etris, what are you doing?”

 

The blonde student spoke with hurried gestures. The concept of finishing this test with anything less than a perfect score horrified her. She needed to buy time. The professor was a powerful divine to the mortals, but Etris was far beyond that globed being. Not a picosecond would roll back without the blonde divine’s permission.

 

“Just wait! Give me another chance and I can get them to bow peacefully. I just need a moment to think of an idea.” said Etris.

 

“You will release your hold on the time this once, the University-”

 

“The bond to not mess with time and space, or usurp a professor’s will, exists only within the Omnimento Dimension. We’re not on school grounds.”

 

“You can’t harm me here!”

 

“Of course I can’t, but I can hold us both here forever!”

 

“You’d do that to corner me into giving you a perfect score.”

 

“No, I’ll earn that. All I want is a chance.”

 

“This sort of extortion is highly unethical. You can’t just make people do things you want like this!” said the professor, her voice infused with fury.

 

That’s when a realization hit Etris. Forcing people to do things she wanted... She remembered some words from earlier on how to be a good deity.

 

“I’ve got it! I know the perfect way. Professor, please just one more chance. I guarantee they’ll love me! Not a single one will be harmed.” said Etris.

 

Professor Utixx grumbled. She shouldn’t give in to something like this, but what choice did she have? It’d be countless years till this universe died, and even then Etris could just roll things back. At least this way she might get it out of her system.

 

“Fine, but you have to promise this scheme of yours won’t harm even one more mortal to get them all to bow.”

 

“I promise.” said Etris, and she disappeared. Utixx stayed on Earth while her face filled the sky.

 

Etris assumed a celestial scale even bigger than when she first warped by Earth at the practical’s start. Rather than a comparative basketball as it was then, it now floated before her less than half that size.

 

Her white wraps flowed impossibly in the void of space to enhance the image she shared to the mortal minds. She kept the same form as before: fleshy in make. However, her blonde hair shined a brighter gold, and as she spoke the pupils of her blue eyes sparked up in that same luminescent shade.

 

She reached out with her mind towards everyone on Earth--sans the professor, of course.

 

“Adore me!” spoke her voice, both mentally and aloud.

 

Then, a simple thought from her tweaked every mortal below. People stopped what they were doing and bowed down in prayer. It didn’t matter who they were or what they thought before. The cyborgs of South Africa knelt down in awe; the billions in Neo Greece genuflected. The neon city of Seoul turned off their lights for the first time in decades so as to better take in her face above. Adulations flew into her as their minds were swamped with love for her being. They gazed to her face above, crying tears of joy or, if on the wrong side of the globe, tears of sorrow at an empty sky. Either way, they praised her.

 

Profess Utixx flew around with her globe body and circumnavigated the planet to take in all the sights. She reached out with her own mind to get a measure on how many mortals presently kowtowed with love in their hearts.

 

100%

 

The Professor was incredulous. How could she have done this so fast? Utixx didn’t like to do this, but ESP was permitted on mortal sapients outside the University’s dimension. She peeked deeper into one human’s mind and saw the thoughts inside. It was all Etris; all the mortal’s thoughts revolved around her.

 

Utixx’s misty form flared up inside her globe. The clear sphere warped up to Etris’s shoulder at about the size of the planet.

 

“What you did now, overriding their wills it’s... it’s...”

 

Etris turned to her professor and smiled.

 

“Wonderful? I know right. It’s such a genius solution. All I did was think back to what you said earlier. ‘A deity should use any appropriate tool at their disposable’ So, I simply forced them to love me and made them bow.”

 

“You’ve violated their free wills!”

 

“So? They love me! All of them bow, and not a single one was harmed.”

 

“You’ve committed a grievous evil! This isn’t what godhood is about!”

 

Etris scoffed.

 

“You’re just impossible to please professor! I was making them bow before with fear, but you put a stop to that. Now you told me to do so without harming a single one, and I did. I proved I could meet whatever challenge you threw at me. A bright enough light can fill any container, no matter how arbitrarily complex or twisted. In that same way I mastered all your tasks.”

 

“You’re the one who’s twisted. You may have heard everything I said all class but clearly you weren’t listening! Why I-”

 

Etris interrupted again.

 

“I see what you are worried about. Perhaps this won’t last, right? Well let me show you something.”

 

Utixx was livid. “I don’t want to see anything more of!”

 

“Quiet.” said Etris and she glared back down at the planet. She’d prove herself to the professor whether that orbed clod wanted her to or not.

 

Another thought and the mortals no longer felt the need to bow. Still, her grace was at the forefront of their minuscule beings. Her majesty and her unending luminescence deserved as much as they could give. Their minds teemed with ideas on how to best worship her.

 

The blonde divine in the sky smiled. Without a single gesture, the world began to spin fast before her and the professor. It rotated around the sun with haste passing them for but a moment before zipping back around the star again.

 

“What are you doing? Wait, you’re not-”

 

“I’m speeding up time for the Universe. Look at what they are making.”

 

Every rotation about the sun, Earth changed. Politicians met in board rooms with architects to deign new monuments for their goddess. Soon, how best to worship Etris became the most dominant aspect of any political agenda. With every few years some new sculptures of the divine student formed. They started as stone effigies just 10s of feet in height, but each creation pushed forward the minimum standards for the next. One hundred years in, bejeweled statues of precious metals dotted the lands. Each monument towered taller than any skyscraper, and loomed more detailed than the finest works of art till her arrival.

 

Fashion shifted to revolve around her. Leotards were ditched in favor of those white demi-toga-like coverings she wore. Even the men matched the style. Mortal educational institutions devoted almost all their required courses to her. Entire fields of research developed on Etris. People dedicated tens of years to studying the history of her acts and the intricacies of her appearance down to every wrinkle. Entire theses were written on how best to praise the blonde goddess to please her most. Centuries long arguments on the topics dominated academia.

 

Entire nations went to war with one another over slight disagreements on how to worship their deity. The USA united with the mutants of Canada to assail the European nations who believed that their goddess preferred standing bows to kneeling ones. Neither side had any proof on either claim, but it was enough for them to blow each other up regardless.

 

Eventually Etris stopped fast-forwarding the cosmos for her and the professor. The planet rested before her once again after millennia of development. Countless nations and mortals perished, but the one surviving nation covered half of the scarred planet with their cities. The other half of the planet was dotted with monuments and imagery of gold. All of it of her: all of it for her.

 

Even if Utixx had a face, she’d fail to express a fraction of the depths of anger and sorrow which stewed in her being. Etris, meanwhile, beamed a smile down to the mortals beneath. They all bowed and sung her praise at that smile: the slightest change in her expression after hundreds of years. All this praise and devotion felt wonderful. Even better, she totally showed her professor how it’s done.

 

“See look, even if I don’t tell them explicitly what to do, they still worship me.” said Etris, turning back to the globe at her side.

 

“You... you are an absolute monster! Look what you’ve done to them! They don’t even have space travel cause they were focused on you. They are far less advanced then they could be. Their wars over you ruined the planet. And all that time without free will.”

 

Utixx’s mist stirred.

 

“This was a mistake! Let me roll back time at once.”

Etris went from bliss to scorn in a second. “I don’t see why? I’ve completed the practical exam in-”

 

“You’ve failed the practical exam!”

 

Etris grimaced. Her eyes shined bright and her hair flared up. Her skin shined so bright that the planet she just ‘nurtured’ disintegrated in its embrace with its survivors thanking her for the opportunity all the while. She didn’t even think of them at all now. Her focus and anger were on Utixx.

 

“Don’t interrupt me while I speak.” she barked. “I’ve simply outsmarted your exam.”

 

“Not at all Etris. I’ve emphasized empathy and care my entire class. You were focused only on the results. Moreover, you’ve shown a mindset utterly incompatible with the values of Omnimento. I have never done this in all my quintillions of years of teaching, but I invoke my powers to temporary expel you from the University! Once we return to its dimension proper I’ll move to finalize the procedure with the appropriate committee. Now I know this is harsh, but for the good of the Infinity Nexus we can’t have someone like you at our institution.”

The Professor tried to warp out of this universe back to Omnimento, but couldn’t. She noticed a smirk on her former student’s face.

“Etris what ar-”

 

Utixx paused. Everything was gone. The Sun. The stars. Golden light took it place.

 

The illumination surrounded Utixx’s globed form. It was blinding, but the professor didn’t need eyes to see and she had other means of assessing space. She sensed and saw this expanse of light go on and on. Too far, in fact, for even her to fathom.

 

“Where I am? Etris, where did you go?”

 

Silence.

“Etris answer me!” her voice flared with anger. She hovered, racing through this light at unfathomable speeds. Still, she got nowhere. This place seemed to go on forever.

 

“Etris. Please explain what’s going on. Where am I?”

 

“There we go.” said a feminine voice resplendent and overwhelming. It reverberated all around and at once within the omnipresent light. Utixx recognized it as her, now former, student.

 

“That’s the sort of deference I expect from my inferiors.” said Etris.

“Inferiors? Etris what did you do?”

 

“You shouldn’t have invoked temporary expulsion Utixx.”

 

“What? Where’s the universe we were in.”

“Dissolved. Well, most of it at least. I left a bit of space.”

 

“Where am I?” said the professor. Her voice was a hurried mess as she tried to piece things together.

 

“You’re inside me.” said Etris.

 

“You ate me?”

“I engulfed you yes, but don’t worry you haven’t been digested yet.”

 

“How? I didn’t even notice.”

 

The student’s laughter echoed all around Utixx.

 

“Sweet simple Utixx. You may be a big deal to those universal microbes from the exam, and even to many of your other students. But to me, you’re nothing. Were my body made of atoms, you’d be as atoms to those atoms. Less, even. That’s the difference in our immensity: in our power.”

 

She continued.

 

“Simply put, professor, you were too lowly to process how fast I can act. You’re too stupid to even fully comprehend my body as it is now. You have more in common with those humans that perished beneath my toes than a being like me.”

 

Utixx roiled with indignation. “You won’t get away with this, when we get back to Omnimento I’ll-”

 

Utixx was interrupted, not just by the voice that followed, but by a sudden inability to speak.

 

“You won’t be going back to Omnimento. As I said, you should have never expelled me as you did. What a shame you let your primitive grasp on your emotions get the better of you.”

 

She tutted, the smug ‘tsk’s hummed around the professor.

 

“Surely you didn’t forget, in your impotent rage, that the code of conduct only prevents students from harming faculty while enrolled right? Such an impatient, simple thing you are. If you had just waited till back at Omnimento’s dimension you’d have been safe. You just couldn’t wait to try and punish me, could you? To try and ‘take me down a notch’ as the humans say.

 

She giggled, then spoke on.

 

“My greatness is absolute though, and certainly can’t be marred by an insignificant thing like you. I am infallible, unlike you. You went and made yourself vulnerable right in the open like that.”

 

“Tsk, tsk, tsk”

 

Utixx could speak again. By now, her anger gave way to dread. Anxiety seeped over her entire airy being.

 

“You won’t be able to get back into the University though!” she yelped.

 

Etris giggled again.

 

“Of course I can. It’s a temporary expulsion, not even shared with anyone else. Once you’re dead, the decree melts away if not finalized. That’s how those work. I’ll back to being a student with a default “A” on the exam since, well, you’ll be gone.”

 

The light around Utixx hummed in a piercing pitch. Her orb began to crack. Utixx felt fear for the first time in countless eons.

 

“No stop! I need that orb to contain my form.” begged the professor.

 

Etris spoke.

 

“Another one of your pathetic limitations, I know. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna kill you yet. Eventually, sure, but first I’m going to show you just how wrong you are. I realized the reason I’ve been getting since harsh treatment this entire exam wasn’t because I was doing anything wrong, but because you’re just too old-fashioned. A set-in-their-ways sphere of inertia. You’re just so close-minded. It’s very immature of you, especially since your orders of magnitude my own age. Why, your ego’s just as fragile as this dome of yours.”

 

Utixx wanted to point out the irony here. She wanted to reiterate how understanding she tried to be, but her focus was on her own body. Her consciousness and her very being depended on her enclosure to be stable. One more crack and she’d be exposed to the outside and denature. Etris knew this, and Utixx knew she knew.

 

“Wait please don’t do this!” said Utixx.

 

“’A deity need not always heed the pleas of her subjects’, I remember you said that in class. Don’t worry professor, I’ll show you how to properly be a god.” said Etris.

 

Etris’s golden light shattered the transparent globe and dissolved it in her existence. The professor felt her green fog of a form destabilize. Her coherency grew loose. It became hard to think. Before her senses faded, the last sound Utixx heard was the laughter of her former student.

Chapter 6: Methodology

 

Utixx was awake and alert again--quadrillions of times over. She existed on a strange rocky planet with platinum cities on the horizon. There, she was in a village with rock-people and noticed her body was just like theirs. On another world, her arms were tentacles and she stood in an underwater street. In other worlds she had wings or spider legs on otherwise humanoid bodies. There was even a human version of Utixx with brown hair and green eyes. She controlled all these bodies, one on all those many many planets. And on each of those planets, she looked to the sky with its other inhabitants to a sight that made her heart sink.

 

Etris’s face.

 

Each of those quadrillions of Etris bodies beamed down a smile and emitted a dim, golden glow from their human-based forms. Each one had on the white garbs from before.

 

Utixx tried to use her powers. She tried to warp off the world, or to grow big enough to jump into space and tell Etris off. She couldn’t. Trying to only had the former professor flapping her bodies around like an idiot. The divine blonde’s voice entered her mind.

 

“How’s it like having multiple bodies? That’s something you couldn’t do till now, right? I can’t imagine going through life like that. Like many other innate powers, I mastered it instantly and effortlessly.”

 

“What have you done!” shouted Utixx to the sky, speaking with all her bodies at once.

 

Etris giggled into the ex-professor’s mind. “I figured what better way to demonstrate just how effective a deity I can be then by ruling every mortal civilization instead of just one. I also thought about how best to show my curmudgeon ex-professor just how much better my methods are than hers? The answer, of course, is by letting her live as a member of each and every civilization at once! You have one body for sapient race, even in cases of multi-species or multi-planet empires and the like.”

 

“What? No, no that can’t be.” said Utixx. “I... where are my powers?”

 

“Your divine status? Di-gest-ed.” said Etris with a singsong voice.

 

“Yummy, but not very filling. I suppose eating those gave me slightly more power, but it’s drop in another drop in yet another drop in a bucket, really.”

 

Another giggle rang out. Etris sensed Utixx’s sorrow.

 

“Aww, don’t be so sad. You always talked about loving and caring for mortals after all. Shouldn’t you be happy to be so many of them now? And don’t worry, long as the civilization persists, I’ll just put you in another body of the species. You’ll be around till the universe itself ends at least. I didn’t kill you, I don’t want to finish my practical exam just yet after all.”

 

“No.” said Utixx, tears running down the faces of the bodies belonging of species that could cry. “No that’s not right!”

 

Etris conveyed the sensation of rolling eyes. “Such a dumb thing you are. I’m the god here; it doesn’t matter what you think is ‘right’. Now, it’s time to prove just how superior my fear-based deific rule can be. Buckle up, the next trillions of years will be very, very fun.”

 

“No, no you can’t!” said Utixx. She screamed, cursed, and begged: mentally and aloud. She looked crazy talking to nothing, but all her ‘fellow’ mortals were too busy looking at the sky to care. In any case, Etris ignored her for now.

Utixx, all of her, really was just another mortal.

 

In the skies of those quadrillions of worlds, Etris spoke. Her voice ripped up winds that ruffled clothes and knocked people over, yet didn’t kill a single soul.

 

“Greetings ‘species’”, her bodies said, where ‘species’ was whatever races inhabited the planet a body loomed over.

 

“My name is Etris, and I am your god. I created this entire universe. Not originally of course, but after digesting it once. That’s right, I eat entire universes as snacks. For the longest time, I did so hardly even noticing.”

 

The crowds of sapients gasped and bickered, fritted and frattered, but listened still.

 

“Well, now you should be honored, cause you have my attention, and the honor of worshiping and devoting yourself to me till this little cosmos of yours expires. I’ve even created a body to speak to each and every one of you minuscule little civilizations. Given that I am so clearly above you all, you should want to bow down of your own accord. Nevertheless, consider that my first command. I want every single person on your planet to bow down to me, symbolizing the acknowledgment of my absolute superiority and rule.

 

She paused. Her smiles faded and from all her bodies, her next word bellowed with the roar of a million suns.

 

“Bow.”

 

Etris stymied the word’s effects with her powers, else her voice would tear them to shreds. She let them feel the thoom of it, let the word rattle their cities to show their fragility, but she didn’t let it harm them or theirs. She was giving them a chance.

 

Of the quadrillions of planets, none fully submitted. The highest rate, present on a handful of planets, was 99%. That 1% were all Utixx bodies, as the ex-professor was too in shock do what’s best.

 

99%. A shame, since Etris wanted 100%.

 

All her celestial bodies reached out with county-crushing fingers towards the largest settlements on each home-world. She smeared those metropolises and their surrounding areas to dust beneath her digits. Every planet was ravaged by the gesture, millions or billions dead. Many of Utixx’s new bodies were caught in it, and for some time she lost sensation of them.

 

Pulling their fingers back, each of Etris’s godly bodies snapped their fingers to restore the damage they wrought. All the cities smashed and life taken was restored, along with the memory of what had occurred, of course.

 

“That is the barest taste of my power. Do you see now how pathetic you all are? I’ll give you another 10 seconds to all bow. I’ll make your ends more encompassing each time you deny me.”

 

Utixx got the message now. Many planets did. Of all the inhabited worlds in the galaxy, 10% now fully submitted. They were typically home to the most pragmatic and logical sapients of the stars. They were greeted with a smile and a booming “good” from their new god.

 

The others met death again. The Etris bodies by their worlds doubled in size and clenched their fingers around their planets. The glowing pillars curled into the crusts of a few quadrillion worlds, flattening cities in their descent and smushing at molten cores. The gooey lava erupted from the cracks of the world to explode out in between her fingers and engulf the few lives that lived till then.

 

She undid the damage and asked again. The number of submitted planets grew to 34%. 66% still needed to get the message. The bodies by those worlds expanded outwards, slowly this time. She let them take in the sight of her face enveloping more and more of the sky. Etris relished this all. Destruction had a certain appeal to it, as did lording her power. The growing bodies cooed as they stopped expanding, reaching a size where planets floated before her like grapes.

 

Her blue eye watched the stubborn mortals remaining. In unison, the relevant bodies of hers shifted so the planets hung by her lips.

 

“Let’s try this again.” she said through all those manifestations. Her lips parted, displaying her gaping maw to the impudent worlds. Saliva dripped, her tongue twitched. They thought for a moment to be devoured, but instead a great blinding light grew in the abyss of her throat and surged forth as a planet vaporizing blast.

 

She reset the broken worlds again. The number of complete submissions rose to 80%. Still not what Etris demanded.

 

Utixx went through all these fates. Though every other mortal had experienced these deaths once or three items at most, her experiences were multiplied by the number of disobedient civilizations. She had died quadrillions of times now, simultaneously more or less in bodies with varying levels of pain sensitivity. All the while she watched sapients perish all around her, many barely even able to comprehend what was going on.

 

All that torment quickly had the ex-divine becoming the biggest advocate of supplicating to Etris. Not out of genuine devotion of course, but simply to stop the suffering. She begged every person she ran into to ebow, convincing quite a few. This got her into trouble as well. For instance, though one of her bodies may have had the insectoid traits of the aggressive Krotathalik sapients, the fact she still had her more peaceful, pragmatic mind had the ex-professor stick out like a sore thumb.

 

“Submit? That’s Flurgestis talk!” they’d say before chopping off her head with their pincer-claws. She’d just return in another similar body instantly after to await the next doom.

 

The punishments continued.

 

“Still stubborn I see?” the divine woman chastised. The bodies overlooking the disobedient worlds grew with each cycle of smiting. Planets became like marbles smushed between her thumbs. After that they were half-marbles, and she floated up with trillions upon trillions of her heavenly forms to crunch the persistent worlds between her toes. Utixx genuinely started to prayer now, trying to reach Etris, apologizing for interrupting her former student or for saying she’d give a poor grade. Little of it was sincere, but Utixx would say anything to try and save herself and these mortals. The only response was toe flesh compressing those planets to atoms.

 

Every apocalypse undone, all lives restored. The deity went on and on. 95% submission was achieved. Not enough. The planets were bugs to Etris’s bodies. She simply looked at them and immolated them beneath searing eyes.

 

97% submission rate across the universe.

 

The planets were hardly visible as mites now. She raised her bare ped above them and pinned them to a floor of force.

 

“You dare defy me still?” those bodies spoke. Those avatars twisted their feet, grinding the worlds into the wrinkles of her star-dwarfing soles. Yet death was denied. The mortals felt the pain of broken bones with none of the injury or mess. She let them feel the expectations of being crushed without the reality.

 

“I can make you feel this pain for 10,000 years. I’ve only just begun to get creative. You will bow.”she boomed directly into their minds.

 

“I am, I am!” screamed many, Utixx included.

 

Another twist of her foot.

“Submit.”

 

They crumbled now. She restored them and asked for a bow.

 

99% submission rate. She was nearly there. That last display of power got even those Krothathaliks to bow. Only a few hundred worlds remained, and they were anomalies. Some stubborn holdovers mostly. Bands of angry sapients formed there, many lead by Utixx, to hunt the impudent down and kill them. At other worlds it was just bad luck. Some planets just had people who couldn’t bow due to injuries. They, too, were dealt with by the billions of sapients desperate for this torment to end. The only way to do so was to bring their bowing rate to 100%

 

The final few destructions were excruciating, though quick at least. Those Etris bodies grew so big the planets were less than specks. The impatient deity simply ripped them to atoms with her mind, or pursed her lips and blew them to space dust with sweet scented breaths.

 

At last, 100% submission rate was achieved.

 

Etris smiled down on every world, where each and every person on its surface, head knelt in respect, knew their place. All her bodies shrunk to a uniform size that had the worlds like fruits at her face.

 

“Wonderful.” she said with her bodies. Etris was overjoyed. She had achieved complete universal domination, and had done it her way in less than 30 minutes of this universe’s standard time.

 

“Now that you know your place, let’s have a fun competition. You all have one decade to make the most splendid statue of me. I’ll return to your home-worlds, ten years from now exactly, and judge their quality. The bottom 10% of civilizations will be obliterated for my amusement. The next 40%, I’ll destroy your capital cities: or planets if you have multiple. The winner will get a kiss from me, and the rest I’ll just leave alone for that time being.”

 

Her smile widened.

 

“See you soon!”

 

Etris fast forwarded the universe to see what they’d cook up. While time moved fast for her, it was normal for all the mortals. Each of those civilizations got to work immediately.

 

How the statues were built depended on the governments of the mortal sapients in question. Many hired their nation’s top artists and engineers to come together with well-compensated laborers recruited from the under-skilled. Other, more brutal societies used slave labor. Utixx, not accustomed to mortal life in general let alone a specific society’s, typically found herself as the laborer class here. She’d been prodded with electricity or venoms to heft heavy stones towards Etris’s egotistical ends. Sometimes she was lucky or smart enough to get a better role in the construction projects.

 

Sometimes, in some bodies, the ex-professor was even a slave driver herself. In that role, she stuffed her sense of empathy deep down so she wouldn’t be the one feeling the back pains. She was suffering in so many other bodies at the same time that she convinced herself she earned the occasional comfy position. After all, if she didn’t do it, some one else would anyways, right? These thoughts comforted her when she zapped or stung the slackers as she had to.

 

Ten years had been a blink for Utixx before, but much of her mortal bodies felt the weight of that time. Several were injured from their efforts, not enough that the bodies couldn’t work though. Those bodies were culled by the others of that species. Per Etris’s will, she got new ones after, and they usually ended up another laborer.

 

At last it was judgment day and Etris returned. Ten years for her was nothing: a blink. She simply thought and sped through it so she wouldn’t get bored. Utixx looked up from her quadrillions of bodies to the quadrillions of Etris’s own divine ones. The former professor felt her blood boil in every meat-sack of hers, but she was too tired and wise to express that in any meaningful way at the blonde being above.

 

“Hello again mortals, let’s see what you’ve done!”

 

Suddenly those divine bodies of Etris were down at the planet’s surface. Each one was sized to match the statue created by the sapients said bodies were ‘assigned’. In some cases, this had her at hundreds of feet tall: in other cases, dozens of miles. She had no regard for where her feet settled when her bodies warped down, and many a welcoming ceremony disappeared beneath her soft, unyielding steps without so much as a glance of acknowledgment.

 

On every world, all media was focused on this event. Her image filled their screens without her having to will it so.

 

For the bottom 10%, her bodies tutted. “Rubbish.” they said, before expanding outwards in size. Those lesser statues broke against her form with the planet following after. Her feet bulldozed their continents till the planet buckled beneath her immense and unalleviated weight. True to her word, if those failures of civilizations had more planets or even star systems under their control, she simply kept growing too they all broke against her skin and clothes. All the while, she smiled wide and savored their destruction.

 

The next lowest 40% earned a smirk. “Not the worst, but still pathetic.” those avatars would say. Then, they’d shove the statue right over, laughing all the while. Afterwards, she’d grow her bodies large enough to smash it under-step, do so, then teleport to that civilization’s capital and introduce it to the underside of her foot.

 

“Take some solace.” many a body spoke. “That you weren’t the most disappointing of them all.”

 

The rest were ignored, she smiled at the towering monuments of gold, stone, silver or strange alloys, then disappear back to loom in the planet’s sky. Crowds cheered at this fate, though Utixx never did. Though she shared these victories, she shared the near endless failures as well.

 

The winner was Earth. The humans were the basis for her form and thus crafted the most stunning monument. It was an eclectic mix of materials, yet filled with enough treasure and details to truly please their god. Etris smiled as she studied it, taking in every wrinkle or print they crafted with expert precision.

 

Her voice reached every sapient still alive in the cosmos.

“Congrats to Earth, the winner!”

 

The humans erupted in a cheer as their watchful Etris avatar floated back up to the sky and reattained a gigantic, world-dwarfing stature.

 

“Let my kiss be a mark of honor across your planet.”, she chimed.

 

Etris’s pink lips puckered over the entire North American continent. Cheers turned to screams as humanity realized the implication. The entire USA got caught in the cataclysmic kiss. The luscious flesh of her lips crushed millions. Utixx was actually here, right at that nation’s center and caught up in the minute hole Etris’s scrunched lips made. She was sucked in with hundreds of thousands, their bodies ripped apart by the smooch’s suction before even settling on the divine body’s tongue.

 

“Mwaa~”

 

Etris pulled that body’s head away and looked down with a smile at the lip-shaped crater her kiss made. Normally such an impact would destroy the planet, but she willed that consequence away. Earth would go on for now.

 

“There, now your planet looks much better.” she giggled.

 

“Everyone over the universe, bow for your gracious goddess won’t you?”

 

They did, and she smiled quadrillions of times over.

 

Utixx lost countless mortal bodies of hers that ‘judgment day’ of Etris’s. Yet even with those civilizations gone, those bodies still existed, floating aimlessly and immobile in the vast expanse of Etris’s light. As a mortal, it was blinding and stung her eyes even when the lids sealed shut. The divine’s voice rumbled in her former professor’s head. It was another personal message.

 

“You didn’t think I’d let those bodies of yours die forever, did you?”

 

“What?” said Utixx. “But those civilizations were destroyed, there’s no reason for-”

 

“I don’t want to incentivize you sabotaging the mortals just so I destroy them and alleviate your suffering early.”

 

Utixx never thought of that, but Etris did. The ex-professor’s bodies shuddered.

 

“But you said I’d get a new body till they were destroyed.” said Utixx in all her mortal forms.

“Which you do, but that doesn’t mean I’m letting you trim down your awareness. I’m sure my light isn’t too pleasant for something as pathetic as those forms. This way, it’s in your interest to be the best mortal you can be: encouraging others, while being devout yourself.”

 

Utixx thought of horrible things to say to this. Etris must’ve noticed them, as the bodies in the divine’s light burnt for a few moments before fading. The ex-student giggled before shifting topics a bit.

 

“Do you see how good at this I am? The people do whatever I say. You are no exception. I hope you’re not too tired, since it’ll be trillions more years till this universe expires: lest I get bored with it first.”

 

Trillions more years. The thought made Utixx weep en masse.

 

Chapter 7: Deadly Sins

 

As the omnipotent ruler of her universe, Etris was very active. She grew to enjoy the fleshy form her bodies took and the pleasures that offered. The demands she made were many; her whims were chaotic, fleeting, and carrying high costs for the mortals in her domain.

 

Anxious anticipation lurked in the hearts and minds of all her subjects--and she loved it. It kept them on their toes. It kept them worshiping her of their own accord. Mortal minds were clouded with worries on when she’d next show up, what demands she’d make next. Every action they took was with a worry it’d upset her in some way and she’d punish their entire planet for it, as she had done to countless others.

 

Etris’s divine senses were ever present, but with her flesh-bodies she could enjoy things at other, often more base levels of delight. And, when Etris wished to indulge, she never held back.

 

She quickly discovered the most visceral pleasure her human-based form offered. The deity experimented with the sex organ she possessed, and found it delightful. She’d show up to cities, completely nude and straddle herself over buildings. Sometimes she’d just lie face down upon them, smearing them beneath her tits and crotch. Other times, as punishments or when her libido’s wants were large, she’d loom in a star system and mash entire planets of sapients into her clit. Many mortals were space-fairing, and she’d often order them to fire all their most powerful weapons deep into her folds. She’d delight in the warmth and tingles they offered when they harmlessly fizzled out against her erogenous flesh.

 

Etris normally ate by consequence rather than with intent. Before Omnimento, simply existing had her light-form imbibing countless universes and lesser divines as she spread across the astral ethers. She soon realized the fun of human-like taste senses. Her avatars would appear in cities, demanding the finest foods they had to offer. Planets starved so she could sample their selections of harvests. Governments hired scores of chefs to prepare villages worth of food, just in case she’d show up wanting a snack. Starving underclasses wrapped in tattered rags salivated at the delights as close as the armed guards and barbed wire would let them get; usually it rotted away out of reach. When not satisfied, Etris set her appetites on the cities or planets themselves. The divine found her fleshy stomachs an excellent source of punishment. The acids within burned the mortals slowly. One fond memory of hers in particular was the time she punished an entire interstellar empire by practically inhaling all their holdings. They felt wonderful against her tongue, and she felt satisfied at the knowledge that they melted away in a gut of hers.

 

The blonde god also made it clear have everything was hers: even the most treasured possessions of mortals. She’d reiterate this by randomly destroying priceless heirlooms and the like. A couple of mortals could be reminiscing over a photo one second, only to feel the burn as it combusted to smoke in their hands. Precious minerals caught her divine eyes: gold, silver. Jewels too. She decreed many more statues built in her rule alongside monuments of all sorts. Despite being able to make anything with a thought, she never replaced the resources she had them use. As a deity, she didn’t want them getting too comfy or spoiled.

 

Even an active deity like Etris wanted some rest now and then. There was also fun in having mortals do tasks which took entire armies: especially when she could do them in an instant. While floating through space admiring her planets, her celestial-scale bodies would often brush against space fleets or moons. Normally, she’d just wipe away the dirt and dust with a thought, but once in awhile she’d order the empire in question to devote resources towards cleaning her up themselves. Ships would land on a her massive reclining form of hers. She let them break apart meteor and moon-sized debris while she relaxed. Teams tethered to vessels laboriously broke apart and removed their fallen comrades from beneath her nails. Occasionally, she’d twitch during the process and end lives beneath minute shifts of her perfect skin or ruffles of her elegant garbs.

 

When Etris was upset, she let everyone know. She broadcasted the big punishments across the universe to reiterate that no transgression would be tolerated. Mortals as a group were punished for the actions of just one. In one case, a disgruntled man in a human city cursed her name when a hover car hit him. Not even a second later and the blonde woman loomed over the metropolis, casting the city in the shadow of her foot before ending it in just one stomp. In another case a small mob of Krotathalik sapients formed to deface one of her towering statues with the phrase “Etris is a monster!” in red paint. A divine body showed up right after, her face commandeered their sky bereft of any amusement. She acted without words, first taking the planet between pinched fingers and then casting it beneath her searing gaze. Golden light coated their planet, washing the insectoid mortals in pure agony. Death didn’t come for hours, at which point she let them dissolve beneath the radiant eye beams.

 

Once in awhile a mortal would impress her with their creativity. A particularly well made statue, for instance, or an amazingly extravagant temple to her splendor. She enjoyed these gifts, but it was important that her subjects knew that even the most genius among them was a stupid, pathetic speck to her. She’d often point out minute flaws, fix them, then punish the creator by smearing their hometown beneath her toe. Other times she’d say a piece was so close to perfection, that its failings were especially disgraceful. She’d at times remove the creativity from those craftspeople, which often forced them to languish as the skill-less underclasses in whatever horrid society formed to facilitate Etris worship and avoid her ire.

 

Above all other pleasures, Etris demanded worship. There was an unrivaled satisfaction to hearing quintillions of lifeforms praise her name. She listened to their prayers, which, through trial and error, turned over time to laundry lists of praise. They exalted her clothes, her smile. Every contour or feature of her body, head to to, had a verses to their own. Any act of hers, no mattered how shameless or horrible, got lauded as a most deserved delight for herself or a most clever and fitting punishment, where applicable. News stations across the universe gradually focused on her more and more, speculating on her actions. Screens everywhere dedicated every hour of the day towards showing imagery of her bodies in the sky, past and present. Societies everywhere revolved around her, for to do otherwise meant a destructive end sooner or later.

 

Etris ruled them absolutely.

 

Ultimately, universes don’t last forever on their own: especially with a self-absorbed deity running them. One hundred trillion years after the start of her all-encompassing rule, and the last stars formed naturally. Etris culled many civilizations before than though: far more than half, in fact. With all the resources the mortals devoted to her, no civilization left could achieve the ability to survive without a star. In a few billion years, those last quadrillion civilized worlds would expire as their stars either died or bloated so big they’d get burnt up.

 

That seemed a boring way to end things. Etris was the ultimate example of godhood, and she’d do better.

 

Her voice reached into all the surviving minds in the cosmos.

 

“These last trillions of years have been fun! I hope my mortal subjects enjoyed the time we shared. All good things must come to an end though: for you, at least.”

 

She giggled, her mirth permeating all space-time in her little ‘toy’ of a universe.

 

“As a reward for making it this far, you all get to witness my true form. Well, at least as best as your pathetic sense can. As your lives dissolve in my luminescence, know that you bring me another bit of pleasure in the process.”

 

Dark void permeated space between the stars and planets and dust. That abyssal blackness made up most of the universe. Yet, when Etris manifested in her true form, it was like someone turned on a light switch. All that dark became shining, golden, burning light. Every city, planet, star and whatever space stuff melted away in her luminescence. The remaining mortals, all of the most devout, burnt away in its agonizing embrace.

 

All mortals except Utixx.

 

Countless Utixx’s languished with one another in Etris’s illumination. All her eyes were dull and sore from constant exposure to the divine’s light, ameliorated as it was for her. For trillions of years, more of her bodies piled up here, trillions of miles apart and in varying shapes and sizes--mostly humanoid. Utixx would have gone mad if she was able, but insanity was a mercy Etris’s powers held from her.

 

The divine light-form had finished with the universe, and all those bodies of Utixx’s were no longer needed. To the sound of her giggles, Etris dissolved them one by one. Utixx felt each body melt away in the light, till only Utixx’s human body remained: black-haired and green eyed with plain clothes. Her eyes stopped hurting just in time for her to take in an Etris avatar.

 

Her monstrous ex-student had formed a smaller body within her own light, it’d seem. The avatar stood 50ft tall, and hovered over Utixx to let the former professor linger by her toes.

 

“Well, it’s definitely funner to make people want to worship you, than just overriding their will. I noticed you getting into all that worship yourself Utixx.” she giggled, poking the woman with her toes.

 

“I did what I had to survive and protect others.”

 

Etris smirked, her blue eyes stared down as she patronized her old teacher. “Of course you did.” She ruffled the mortal’s hair with a toe, giggling.

 

“So, tell me, how did it feels to be outperformed by your own student? To be so humiliated? I’m only 20 divine eons old and you’re millions. Yet, I’ve upended your entire life’s focus.” she sighed. “It’s to be expected, I’ve always been something of a prodigy and I’m definitely the superior being here. I mean, you’re not even divine anymore!” she giggled again. “Some beings are just better than others. Far, far better.”

 

By now, Utixx had lived too many mortal lives to work up much anger at the taunt. There was truth to those words, too.

 

“There’s no need to answer, I can read how myself. Anyways, this was fun. You know, I took this class just for the gen-ed credit. After all this though, I think I’ll make it not just a hobby, but something more. I just needed to do things my way was all to realize that.”

 

Etris giggled, thinking back on all the fun times she had with her mortal subjects. Soon, she spoke again.

 

“Now, I don’t think you can deny any longer my methods are superior. I’ve thoroughly shown that. All that’s left is to finalize that to writing, along with some other things.”

 

A piece of paper appeared by Utixx, alongside a glowing green pen.

 

“Like it? It’s your favorite color. Anyways, if you just sign that I’ll digest you and get back to the university.”

 

Utixx looked the paper over. It was a simple, one page document. She read parts of it aloud, skipping over the plentiful paragraphs of pure praise. Reading as a mortal was so very slow.

 

“I Professor Utixx hereby proclaim Etris as the best student I’ve had had... not only has she aced her practical exam and my class, but she’s done so by revolutionizing the field of deifics itself... so impressive was her performance that, effective immediately, I resign from my position, forsake my divine essence to her, and leave to pursue a life as a mortal till my end comes...”

 

Utixx looked up at Etris, who glared back down at her. “Keep going, there’s more.”

 

Utixx continued. “For the future of the course, I highly suggest-”

 

The woman paused.

 

“No” she said. “No I can’t sign this.”

 

“Yes you can. I gave you back your ability to do a divine signature.” said the divine.

 

“No. I can agree to everything else Etris, but not that last part!”

 

Etris smiled. She slid her avatar’s foot forward onto Utixx and pressed down. The mortal was squeezed against an invisible floor, stuck between the sole of her former student and a perfectly smooth, hard surface. The blonde being tutted.

 

“Tsk tsk. I thought 100 trillion years would teach you not defy me. I guess it just shows how stupid you really are. To think you used to have the nerve to try and teach me of all beings.”

 

Etris pressed down with her foot, wracking Utixx’s body with pain. No death or injury of course, just the pain the gesture should have brought. Utixx writhed and screamed.

 

“Please! Please don’t make me sign this.” said Utixx in between bursts of agony.

 

Etris sighed. “I kind of want to get back to the lecture hall, announce my success, then handle my other finals for the semester. Oh, and of course, try and talk with the dean. So I’ll make this simple for you.”

 

She continued.

 

“Imagine the worst pain one of your bodies felt during my reign of my little universe there. Was it when I seared the Krotathalik again and again with you one of them? Was it the time you and the other mortals on planet Noktunak digested into chyme? Maybe it was when I boiled the Banoillian capital city, where one of your bodies dwelt, for bungling that parade I asked for?”

 

She twisted her foot, smirking. Her voice sung with a piercing hum. “I know the answer of course, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that whatever it is, imagine it times a million, spread over ten trillion times how long you’ve been mortal thus far, compressed to a mere instant from my perspective. How’s that sound?”

 

Utixx didn’t want that. She knew she lost.

 

“I’ll sign it.”

Etris gave her foot one last twist, causing the mortal to let out another scream.

 

“Of course you will.”

 

Utixx gave her signature, and the paper poofed away with the pen. Etris smiled wide.

 

“The student has became the master” she said, chuckling softly.

 

Utixx hung her head low in shame.

 

“Well much as I’d like to keep you around, I do need to kill you to get technically unexpelled and get back to University. First, why don’t you thank me for the lesson. I imagine it was quite thorough.”

 

Utixx didn’t bother fighting that. What was one more bit of humiliation to her now? She bowed her head by Etris’s big toe.

“Thank you for the lesson. You truly are the best deity there ever was and will be.”

 

Etris grinned.

 

“I know.”

 

Utixx screamed as the luminescence held back no longer. Her form disintegrated into Etris’s light.

 

The student dissolved her avatar, then warped out of the universe back to the lecture hall.

 

Etris reformed without the professor, holding in her hand a piece of paper. The student’s gasped at a body new to them: white clothes, fair skin, blue eyes and golden blonde hair. Her body still glowed some, of course, and had the same slender and feminine shape they knew.

 

From the perspective of those in the university, Etriss was taking the practical test for just a second.

 

“Etris” Galigiu began. “You look different.”

 

“I know!” she said with a smile. “I decided to model my body a bit more after the humans.”

 

She spun around on her bare feet. Her garbs and hair twirled with her.

 

“Where’s Professor Utixx?” said Galigiu.

“Oh she thought I did so good she resigned on the spot.” said Etris.

 

“Well, where is she now?”

 

“She left to live the rest of her days as a mortal. Probably fell into a black hole or something.” said Etris.

 

Galigiu blinked. The other students tilted their heads, confused.

 

“Don’t worry.” said Etris. She waved that paper around. “She signed this beforehand, giving everyone an A on the practical exam.”

 

The students cheered, waving their arms and tentacles.

 

“Wew” said Galigiu, flipping her star-hair back behind her ears. “That’s one less thing to worry about then.”

 

Etris smiled. “Well, now that you are all filled in, I need to get this paper to the dean. Good luck on your next finals everyone.”

 

Signed paper in hand, Etris headed straight to the dean’s office. She had to wait a bit, something she wasn’t entirely pleased about, but she got that audience soon enough and slid the paper over the desk.

 

The female voice spoke to her. “Very interesting. You must’ve really impressed Utixx for something like this to happen. She taught that class for quintillions of years, you know.”

 

“I do.” said Etris, nodding her head.

 

“Normally I’d refuse but I feel, given the circumstances and splendid praise here, it’s at least worth a try. You say you can keep your schedule clear for it?”

 

“Yes absolutely.” said Etris.

 

“Alright then. Starting next semester, you’ll be teaching Godhood 101 as one of the Omnimento University’s first student-professors. You’re expected to keep atop your own courses, however.”

 

Etris smiled.

 

“Don’t worry dean. I won’t you let you down.”

Etris walked out of the office overjoyed. Over the break, she planned to practice her godhood on a few more universes. Deifics was more than just a gen-ed credit or hobby to her now; it was a real passion, one she couldn’t wait to share her opinions on with the other students. Plus, as a professor, she could lord her superiority over her peers in new and exciting ways.

 

‘Next semester will be fun.’, she thought.

 

Fin